A study on RCM approach to catenary system of electric railway

Abstract

A RCM approach to maintenance of the catenary system of electric railway is proposed. The proposed RCM approach provides a maintenance-oriented FMECA procedure to derive critical failure modes by analyzing failure effects and a RCM decision logic tree to suggest optimal maintenance works for the derived failure modes. By applying the proposed RCM procedures to the catenary system of high speed railway, it is suggested that strand breaks of dropper and voltage equalizing wire, and trolly wire wear-out are the critical failure modes for whom maintenance works based on condition monitoring should be applied instead of conventional time-based preventive maintenance. It is also proposed by reliability analysis that replacement time of dropper can be reduced from 18 years to 10 years. These results show that the proposed RCM approach can optimize the maintenance procedures of catenary system.